Those exotics, and domestics of that callibur are pretty much out of reach for the general public because of price. Mustangs, yeah a bit outplayed and every one seems to have em. A Honda Civic pulling 10's great engineering, for the strip, not realworld friendly or street legal for that matter.
The kids of today are pretty much "bolt-on" upgraders or "sticker pushers" with "go fast wings." In the days I was coming up in the automotive scenes, we figured things out (needles, secondary timings, Vaccum advances, lift/duration) pretty much the things you do now, we just paved the way for you but ever try coordinating a 6 pack? Those only worked on the center carb with normal use. Mash the pedal, the outboard carbs opened up. Mulitple afb carters, side webers ... it's a far cry from todays computer controlled cars. Kids these days are slapping on too many stickers and only adding up hp #'s from intakes, exhaust and chips instead of taking it to the dyno. I can keep up with you tuner boys when it comes to bench top racing, but in the real world ... the speed comes down to the highway, not 1/4 mile times. You should see the faces of the kids when i take em at the line, wheels screaming and smoking, in my Taurus wagon (V6, 24 v DOHC) and that's stock. On the highway, with our 96 Impala SS or my 99 Limited ... kickdown the tranny and hold on while the car takes off. 100 mph comes up and is pased pretty quickly. Their speed /rev limiters come up even faster. Nitrous, yeah great for the track sux for the street. What are you gonna do after your tank runs out or if you're running too much juice for too long and burn your piston? My thing is, if the raw #'s are already there, going faster is not a problem. If you're spending to go as fast as me while I'm still stock, plan on something giving way because my money says that sooner or later something internal will give.
The kids that lust after the Fast & Furious movies are the ones that make me laugh. The people that make race purpose tuners have my respect. I use the terms kids and people as seperate entities. The "kids" are dangerous on the street. The "people" respect the street and take the danger to the track.
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Blueridge, yes I am deffinitely a 350 and above guy. Getting a solid 400 hp out of an LS1 is not the problem, squeezing the torque out is the challenge! You have to remember, the #'s being posted by the manufacturer are crank readings, not rear wheel. To be honest with you, i really wouldn't touch the LS1's to get the hp/torque #'s you are asking about. It's a rocket straight out of the box. If you want to strictly use it to race, that's a different story. If you're doing street light racing, why even bother? A lot of these rice rockets can't keep up with you on the highway, but will take you at the 60 foot marks but putter out just before the 1/4 mile comes by. And it's dangerous, I've had my close calls in the past. These rice burners are mostly noise anyway. Compare the raspiness of a 4 banger, the lackingness of a 6 (unless tuned like the 350Z - that has a nice note) to the idling grumble of a free breathing V8/roar of W.O.T. Is there really a comparison? not in my book, i'll take the roar of a V8.
The most I would do to the F body cars you're talking about (camaro/firebird aka pony cars) is get it breathing right with a cat back, high flow cat converter, headers, intake (unless it has the ramair option, reflash the computer with a hypertech unit (chips don't apply to gm cars above 1996, the chips are soldered to the board, not replaceable). Of course with all that go-power, you need to upgrade the binders on that beast to stop it. It's already powerful, work on the handeling. That's their weakness. You can go straight fast, but you gotta turn sooner or later.
I remember helping my dad on the first engine build I ever participated in. We built a boat engine from scratch. Just purchased the block (LT-1, 4 bolt main) and bought everything else from catalogs. When all was done, it was .40 over and all the High speed bells and whistles producing an approximate 425 hp ... on paper, never had it on a dyno. All I can say was that it was pushing our 4200 lb cuddy cabin above 58 mph on the Lowrance (pre gps, just triangulated via land based antane). On GPS it is actually 57.3 mph. Pretty good #'s for a boat that size ... 4 secs to plane and a very good topspeed, just bad mileage. Don't even ask how much, boats go Gallons/hour not Miles /gallon.
Fuel injection is great ... you can reflash the computer to work with your upgrades but Carbs require finesse and inginuity. That's why even with R/C's, a poor tune will be prominent. It's the patient person with a good ear as well as experience that get's his engine runing well. Tune it to the book's directions, then listen for the smoothness of the loping at idle and scream at WOT.
